Gothamist77%
NJ Transit riders lose patience as World Cup disrupts commutes for locals at Penn Station 29%
By Stephen Nessen66% Giulia Heyward48%
6/16/2026, 10:07:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Framing Effect, and Biased Writer Voice, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 23.4% saturation with 157 hits. Analysis detected 905 faulty-reasoning hits from 671 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39.2% and a BS Rank of 29% (15,688 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 71.70% of the article peer group.
The World Cup left many NJ Transit commuters miffed on Tuesday as the tournament’s France-Senegal game at MetLife Stadium shut down most of the agency’s rail services at Penn Station.
The event was the second of eight World Cup matches to be hosted in the Meadowlands this summer — but the first to interfere with weekday transit service.
For four hours before each match, the NJ Transit areas of Penn Station are reserved exclusively for World Cup-bound riders.
Regular New Jerseyans looking to get home were directed to take the PATH train and transfer at Newark.
Garden State officials have for months warned riders of the plan, which they said is necessary to impose security checks mandated by FIFA.
But some regular commuters like Millburn resident Tony Peterson missed the memo.
He was met with a lengthy wait for a train when he arrived at Penn Station just after 2 p.m., just as NJ Transit reopened its areas to the general public.
He said he assumed the delay was caused by the sort of infrastructure meltdown that has made headlines at the Midtown train hub in recent months.
“New Jersey Transit is always just a not pleasurable experience,” said Peterson, 41, who works for Kidz Bop in Midtown.
“My daughter's prom is today.
I'll probably miss her.
My wife is sending her off, but it’s not really different from any other day, unfortunately.
Every day it's delay after delay, inconvenience after inconvenience.”
Not everyone who ran into trouble was trying to leave the city.
King Love, a 21-year-old IT worker from Newark, said he was late to work Tuesday after learning some trains weren't running because of the World Cup transit plan.
"I actually was late for work today," Love said.
"Just because I didn't know that some of the trains weren't running."
Love said he expects he'll have to leave home earlier for the next several weeks as the tournament continues.
He also questioned whether transit agencies adequately prepared for the crowds.
"I definitely think they didn't plan accordingly," he said.
"I definitely think they didn't take into account how many people actually are tuned in and tapping into the World Cup."
Others like Gabe Gutierrez, 23, from the Bronx was hoping to visit his parents in New Jersey during the afternoon.
“That definitely sucks,” he said, after learning he couldn’t enter the station until the last train for World Cup ticket holders left.
“Definitely an inconvenience.”
Still, he enjoyed seeing all the soccer fans flooding into the station.
“I'm not really interested in the World Cup.
It's still nice to have the New York City vibes up,” he said.
The vibes were not up for many tourists heading to the game, who were forced to pay $98 for NJ Transit train tickets and were panicked by Penn Station’s labyrinthine layout.
“It's absolute mayhem,” said Tony Giamboi, 64, from Perth, Australia.
Giamboi flew into New York on Sunday and had hoped to score one of the 12,000 World Cup shuttle bus tickets that go for $20.
But those tickets sold out, so he had to buy last-minute NJ Transit tickets for himself and his son.
Crews at Penn Station cordoned off two entrances for World Cup ticketholders to enter Penn Station.
One of them was on 33rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.
That one was closed off just as Giamboi had hoped to board a train, so he was led by an NJ Transit ambassador on a circuitous route down 33rd Street to Sixth Avenue, over to 32nd Street to another entrance, where he passed through a security checkpoint.
“It's very stressful at the moment, just to get transport to the stadium itself, never mind the fact that the tickets are mega-expensive,” said Giamboi.
“We’re trying to get there for kickoff.”
“There should be more options for people, or straightforward options in this day and age in a city like New York,” he added.
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